24 February 2011

Been reading Slavov Zizek's (with special accents over the Zs), Living in the End Times. Dense, heavy with Marxist-Freudian-Lacanian theory. I can make sense of less than half but some is startlingly relevant, stating familiar concepts in a new way. Here's a characteristic passage:

"At the geological and biological level, [Ed] Ayres enumerates four 'spikes' (or accelerated developments) asymptotically approaching a zero-point at which the quantitative expansion will reach its point of exhaustion and will bring about a qualitative change. These four spikes are: population growth, consumption of resources, carbon gas emissions, and the mass extinction of species. In order to cope with this threat, our collective ideology is mobilizing mechanisms of dissimulation and self-deception which include the direct will to ignorance: 'a general pattern of behavior among threatened human societies is to become more blinkered, rather than more focused on the crisis, as they fail.' The recent shift in how those in power are reacting to global warming is a blatant display of such dissimulation."